The department now has 668 sworn officers. But the city has allotted 698 police officers, Dabadie said.

“We’re thirty short, and that comes through attrition and retirement,” he said. “People are always retiring and leaving the department.” With the additional 27 officers, “this gets us a lot closer (to 698) than we had been in years,” Dabadie said.

“Anytime you have more officers that of course is going to calm some fears,” Dabadie said. “Because you have more eyes on the street, more people, boots on the ground.”

Dabadie said this graduating class ready to hit the streets.

“I spoke with them Friday, kind of joked around, they’re all a little bit nervous but their anxious and ready to go.”

Technology is probably the biggest changed since Dabadie went through the academy. “Technology in the last 10 years has went through the roof,” Dabadie said.

The department spent about $90,000 per officer or $2.6 million in total to outfit each officer and graduate them from the academy, Dabadie said.

“I wanted to enter the academy because I grew up in one of the rough neighborhoods, and wanted to give back to the community and help the people who couldn’t help themselves,” Baton Rouge Police Academy graduate Officer Laterial D. Sawyer said.

Sawyer said the academy was the longest “20 weeks” of his life. “There were so many surprises,” he said. “The biggest surprise was I didn’t get shot in one of our shooting scenarios.”

Sawyer said he wants to make everyone proud and ultimately go into the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination, or BRAVE unit.

Dabadie offers one piece of advice to the new sworn officers: “keep their passion for wanting to be a police officer because that passion will keep their integrity in check.”